![]() But Edna’s suicide seemed, to my teenage self, as melodramatic as Romeo and Juliet’s. ![]() ![]() I understood The Awakening’s appeal in the abstract I appreciated that, despite the seeming quaintness of its epiphany, its content was radical, even shocking for its era. I was fifteen years old and neither mother nor wife (nor straight, though I didn’t realize it at the time). Its back flap copy promised a feminist classic, and it sounded pretty sexy besides. But I read The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, first. It was one among a small stack of books from her home library-including titles by Henry James, Gloria Naylor, and Gabriel García Márquez-that would begin to make up the backbone of my own personal canon. It was hard to fully appreciate The Awakening when I first read it, given to me by my sophomore-year English teacher to appease my rage against all the Hemingway we were assigned. John William Waterhouse, Miranda, 1875, oil on canvas, 30″ x 40″.
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